Flashback a bit more than a decade ago to Union Theological Seminary in New York city where Cathlin Baker and Raphael Warnock were a couple of seminary students, studying and playing pool together at the seminary pub. Today they are, respectively, the pastors at the West Tisbury Congregational Church on Martha’s Vineyard and the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the former home church of Rev. Martin Luther King Sr., “Daddy King,” and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The Honorable L. Douglas Wilder will be the featured speaker at the Taste of Road Scholar event on Tuesday, August 16 at Shearer Cottage in Oak Bluffs.

Mr. Wilder’s career in public service spans 40 years. As a state senator representing Richmond from 1969 to 1985, he became the first African American state senator in Virginia since the Reconstruction. He was also the first African American to be elected governor in the U.S., leading the Commonwealth of Virginia from 1990 to 1994. He later served as mayor of Richmond from 2005 until 2009.

Chicken Alley Art Show Arrives

In this age of free range chicken-raising, throw an egg in the air anywhere on this Island and odds are you’ll hit a fellow chicken farmer, one might think a reference to a place called Chicken Alley speaks of some storied Shangri-la where golden eggs roll freely from the barnyard.

Reality, however, speaks to a place of no chickens but plenty of golden eggs, metaphorically at least.

Allright everyone, time to put down the golf clubs, set aside the tennis racquets, becalm the wind and kite surfing equipment, dock the surfboard and sheath the lion taming whip. The time has come for more manly pursuits, women may apply too, and children, if up to muster, are also invited.

And what you ask, gentle reader, could be so dangerous an activity and yet include such a wide swath of the vacationing public? Well, ping-pong of course.